I. Creative Non-Fiction Essay or Literacy Narrative
- 1,500-1,800 words / ~ 5-6 double-spaced pages
- 20% of course grade
- This assignment situates students in the context of your course focus or theme and allows them to approach readings and questions you’ll pursue from their own perspective and experiences. Could include ethnographic methods such as interviews of people in their family and/or narratives of their own experiences, focused around the question of how the questions you’ll raise in your course relate to their lives. Such writing privileges students’ existing literacies and experiences while they transition into college and learn to navigate the discursive conventions of academic prose.
Amy Baily: Expanding the Literacy Narrative
Would work for online, hybrid, and in-person classes
This assignment has students engage in a multi-step process (which includes a pre-class prep component) to identify fun and unexpected connections with scholarship, archives, and other resources that can help them see how their story matters to the world at large.
Lisa Blankenship: Literacy Narrative
This assignment asks students to tell a story about an experience they’ve had in which they felt they were stereotyped or misunderstood, using the concepts of literacy and discourse communities to focus particularly on the role of language. Students have just written a rhetorical analysis, and now they’re using concepts and interpretative lenses we discussed to analyze their own identity formation within a certain discourse community, paying particular attention to the role of stereotyping. See “Schedule” on our course blog for readings and daily activities.
Carolyn Cooper: A food-related, culturally relevant personal experience essay
This food-related, personal experience essay that asks students to include an emotional impact known as the duende.
Brooke Schreiber: Literacy and Language Narrative
A way for students to reflect on their process of learning to read, write, and speak across languages, and an opportunity to introduce themselves to me and their classmates.
Peter Vilbig: A Sense of Self
This assignment helps students develop skills in creating narrative, moving between narrative and analysis, and deepening analytical skills.